Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders worker at that point in the distribution, so $58,740 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 159,500, or 0.10% of the U.S. total. Texas leads the state table with 16,220 jobs; the top three states sum to 22.3% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: South Dakota posts a location quotient of 2.80, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $35,480 or less, and one in ten earns $72,800 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.1 to 1 and the annual gap is $37,320. The mean ($51,610) versus median ($47,590) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders runs from the $63,440 median in Alaska down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (16,220 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders stands number 190 by employment and number 577 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Production Occupations, the group median wage is $46,020 across 105 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 3% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.8% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 23 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $47,590, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is the largest metro employer with 5,240 jobs, 3.3% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 344 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Huntsville, AL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $43,490 a year, against $69,740 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $47,590 a year is $3,966 a month gross, $1,830 every two weeks, $915 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($39,470) to the 75th ($58,740) is worth $19,270 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $3,966 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $52,349 would sit between the median ($47,590) and the 75th percentile ($58,740), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $39,470, is $8,120 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Production Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Cutters and Trimmers, Hand, Woodworkers, All Other, Cooling and Freezing Equipment Operators and Tenders, Pourers and Casters, Metal, Textile Bleaching and Dyeing Machine Operators and Tenders, Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.